5×15 presents Steven Pinker on Enlightenment Now with Amol Rajan

Is modernity really failing? Or have we failed to appreciate progress and the ideals that make it possible?

If you follow the headlines, the world in the 21st century appears to be sinking into chaos, hatred, and irrationality. Yet Steven Pinker in his new book, Enlightenment Now, argues that this is an illusion – a symptom of historical amnesia and statistical fallacies. If you follow the trendlines rather than the headlines, you discover that our lives have become longer, healthier, safer, happier, more peaceful, more stimulating and more prosperous – not just in the West, but worldwide. Such progress is no accident: it’s the gift of a coherent and inspiring value system that many of us embrace without even realizing it. These are the values of the Enlightenment: of reason, science, humanism and progress.

The challenges we face today are formidable, including inequality, climate change, Artificial Intelligence and nuclear weapons. But the way to deal with them is not to sink into despair or try to lurch back to a mythical idyllic past; it’s to treat them as problems we can solve, as we have solved other problems in the past. In making the case for an Enlightenment newly recharged for the 21st century, Pinker shows how we can use our faculties of reason and sympathy to solve the problems that inevitably come with being products of evolution in an indifferent universe. We will never have a perfect world, but – defying the chorus of fatalism and reaction – we can continue to make it a better one.

Steven PinkerSteven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.

He’s an experimental psychologist and researcher in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations and his previous books include: The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate and The Better Angels of Our Nature.

He’ll be interviewed by the BBC Media editor Amol Rajan.

Join 5×15 for this essential discussion.

5×15 presents Steven Pinker on Enlightenment Now with Amol Rajan at Emmanuel Centre on Thursday 21st of March 2019.